Tuesday, November 20, 2007

RSS--A Guide by Michael Pick (from Robin Good) Everyone who wants to find open educational resources needs to learn how to effectively use rss. Robin Good [Robin Good's Latest News] passes along this piece by Michael Pick which covers the basics, plus some of the intermediate and advanced rss tools. ____JH ______  RSS isn't just for geeks. In fact, it can make both finding and publishing relevant and interesting content on the web a lot easier, in addition to providing another effective way of promoting your own online content - whether that's in the form of a blog, podcast, or video show. Essentially RSS, which stands for "Really Simple Syndication", is a simple way that you can receive updates from blogs, online news websites and other rich media as soon as they are published to the web. Rather than having to visit all of your favorite sites several times to see if any new content has been added, RSS brings the content to you the minute it goes live. You can collect this content in a number of ways - the two most popular being feed readers for text-based content, and podcatchers (also known as media aggregators) for audio and visual content like podcasts and video shows. In both cases the simple tools involved resemble your email inbox - every time a new episode of a web tv show, or post from a blog, is published to the web, it appears in the top of your feed reader or podcatcher, just as a new email would in your inbox. Subscribing to this content is push button simple, and it's even possible to filter your "feeds" for keywords to narrow down the information that reaches you. With RSS you can gather all of the information from the far corners of the web in one place, tailored to your specific interests and tastes. Whether you want to collect the latest stocks and shares forecasts, keep an eye on cheap flights and holiday deals, or filter the global news for articles that are likely to interest you, RSS can make a very big difference to the way you navigate the web. And as you grow in your confidence, the possibilities of what you can achieve through RSS grow also. Suddenly what seemed like an arcane science suddenly opens up a powerful set of tools and strategies that you can use in your future business or publishing strategies. Happy feed reading! Additional Resources If you'd like to read more about RSS, you might want to check out the following resources: Robin Good's RSS Top 55 Marjolein Hoekstra's description of creating a professional news radar Marshall Kirkpatrick's interesting post on how he used RSS as lead blogger for Tech Crunch The Beginner's Guide To RSS from Small Office Australia What Is RSS? from the About.com Internet For Beginners site Originally written by Michael Pick for Master New Media and titled "What Is RSS: A Guide To Really Simple Syndication Benefits, Best Uses And Applications" 7:56:48 AM    COMMENT []